


beggars, choosers

by Edoro



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: BDSM, Barebacking, Choking, Consensual Non-Consent, Gags, Light Bondage, M/M, Rape Fantasy, Rough Sex, Trans Elias Bouchard, Trans Male Character, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-14
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:35:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27006679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edoro/pseuds/Edoro
Summary: Peter pays Elias an unexpected visit one evening.
Relationships: Elias Bouchard/Peter Lukas
Comments: 11
Kudos: 121





	beggars, choosers

**Author's Note:**

> The sex in this fic is a consensual scene negotiated ahead of time, though we don't see that negotiation. Other things not in the tags:
> 
> -there is aftercare, but it's very half-hearted and insufficient, because it's Peter Lukas doing it.  
> -at various points in the story, Elias thinks about past sexual trauma in a fairly vague way.  
> -terms used for Elias's anatomy: cunt, clit, breasts.

Work-life balance is a concept that Elias is theoretically aware of, and erratically tries to enforce in his staff, but cannot say he personally practices. The pile of manila folders on the table in front of him gives the lie to that idea right away. He’s taken up residence in his dining room, in a high chair pulled up to the table, and he’s focused enough on wrestling the monthly budgets into submission that he doesn’t notice the fog rising around his ankles.

Gradually, though, it comes to his attention. There’s a damp sort of feeling wreathing his lower legs, and when he glances down, he sees it, and rolls his eyes. For all that Peter accuses him of enjoying high drama too much, he’s got a flair for the theatrical all his own.

Creeping fog duly acknowledged, Elias turns back to his work. The budget is not going to balance itself.

The fog coalesces into a familiar figure in the kitchen doorway. Without looking up, Elias says, “Good evening, Peter. I’m really rather busy, so if you don’t mind -”

He doesn’t get the chance to finish. Peter crosses the room in three long strides and grabs him under the arms, yanking him up out of his chair. Elias manages one strangled squawk of outrage before he’s slung unceremoniously over Peter’s shoulder.

Blood rushes to his head, making his vision swim dizzily. The knob of Peter’s shoulder digs into his ribs, preventing him from drawing breath enough to deliver the tongue-lashing this behavior deserves. It’s almost frightening to be so disoriented, but he hasn’t been wholly dependent on only his physical senses in a long time.

Paintings line the walls of his home, all with eyes worked cleverly into them. Through these, he watches Peter haul him out of the kitchen, through the sitting room, and down the hall to the stairs. He reaches into Peter’s mind with sharp and grasping fingers, tearing the ever-present fog into wisps. 

Determination - excitement - smugness - a thrumming, angry lust - a pointed thought, because Peter can feel his presence when he reaches in so gracelessly:  _ you’ve been begging for it for months, you smug prick, and tonight I’m going to give it to you. _

Elias struggles. He manages to jam his knee into Peter’s chest hard enough to make Peter grunt and stagger. He does it again, harder, writhing like a fish in Peter’s one-armed grasp, and Peter stops but doesn’t let him go.

“If you don’t hold still,” Peter says, a bit strained, but still with that infuriating faux affability on top, “I’m going to drop you down the stairs. Do you want that?”

“If you don’t put me down right this  _ instant _ -”

“What?” Peter laughs and gives his bottom a sharp smack, though the true injury is to his dignity. “You’ll what? None of your little schemes work very well when someone’s got their hands on you, do they?”

Every jouncing step rattles Elias’s brain around in his skull. He opens his mouth to try and give a cutting retort and ends up simply biting his own tongue hard enough to fill his mouth with the iron taste of blood. Discretion, he decides after that, is the better part of valor, at least while he’s being carried up the stairs.

It’s true that his abilities are more cerebral than physical. It’s also true that Peter is quite a lot bigger than he is, although the man’s duties hardly require much more strength than sitting behind a desk does. If Elias truly wished, he could peel Peter’s mind open and Look into the very core of him, which would deal him a grievous injury if it didn’t kill him outright. But then he’d have to explain the matter to Nathaniel. The Lukas family isn’t likely to be overly put out by losing one of theirs; he suspects that hosting funerals is as close as that lot gets to a good time. Still, it would be a hassle.

Hassle or not, though, allowing this sort of foolishness to go unremarked upon sets a dangerous precedent.

“Peter,” he says, as evenly as he can under the circumstances, once they’re in the upstairs hallway. “I don’t know what it is you think you’re doing, but I’m giving you the chance to stop. Unhand me now and I’ll consider it no harm done, understand?”

Peter pushes his bedroom door open, taking no particular care to keep his dangling head from swinging into the doorframe as they pass through. His grip on Elias shifts, and suddenly Elias is flying through the air. He hits the bed flat on his back with a  _ whoof _ as the air is forced from his lungs.

“Don’t play coy, Elias,” Peter says pleasantly. He stands near the middle of the room, hands on his hips and a considering expression on his face. “You know it annoys me.”

Elias struggles into a sitting position, head swimming. He’s having trouble getting his breath back, or else he’d have more than a few things to say about how much he cares if Peter is  _ annoyed _ just now.

“Don’t you think about trying to run off, now.” Peter drops into a crouch to - yes, by God, he’s worn his shoes into the house and upstairs, on the  _ carpet,  _ and now he’s untying them. The whole rest of the situation is so bizarrely out of character that Elias is having trouble keeping his mind wrapped around it, but this is such a mundane, familiar sort of rudeness. “If you do, I’ll catch you. And if I can’t catch you, well, you won’t end up anywhere you want to be.”

The temperature in the room drops. Fog rolls across the floor, so thick that the green of his carpet is only a dark suggestion beneath it, and mounds up in swirling drifts in the corners. This is no subtle creep, no, but rather a stormfront blowing abruptly in. A cold hand squeezes Elias’s heart in his chest.

“But,” Peter continues, standing up now to shrug off his jacket and hang it on the door handle, “if you’ll just be a good boy and take your lumps, why, this’ll all be finished up in thirty minutes. I’ll even make sure you enjoy yourself.” A frigid smile creases his face. 

He crosses the room with a slow, deliberate tread, shedding clothing as he goes. By the time he reaches the bedside he’s down to his trousers, belt hanging open from its loops. He puts one knee on the bed and says, coaxingly, “So, will we be cooperating?”

Elias works his mouth for a moment, then spits a wad of bloody phlegm at him. Peter doesn’t move a muscle, so it hits dead on and slides slowly down his cheek.

Peter looks steadily at him. His eyes are flat as a frozen puddle, with about as much depth. The mask of faux cheeriness drops away, and underneath it is not anger but simply  _ nothing.  _ That emptiness has at times intrigued Elias - how a man can have any sort of life at all with so little substance to him is, still, quite a mystery - and infuriated him, but it’s never scared him until now.

“Elias,” Peter sighs, soft as morning mist. Then he raises up one blunt, heavy hand, and briskly cracks Elias a backhand slap across the face. “Let’s not be crude.” He gathers the mess on his own face up with two fingers, regards it with brief distaste, and then wipes it on the bedspread.

“Crude?” There is a shrillness to his own voice which Elias doesn’t want to acknowledge. “Crude? Come closer, Peter, and I’ll show you  _ crude.”  _

“Oh, I’m sure you could! I don’t think I’ll give you the chance, though.” Though he might project stillness and stolidity, Peter can move fast when he wants to. He surges forward to straddle Elias, pinning him quite effectively between his thighs.

Teeth bared, Elias claws at him. Though his nails score red, ragged trails down Peter’s bare chest, Peter simply sighs again and grabs his wrists, grinding them together in one huge hand. With his other hand, he draws his belt free from his pants.

“No,” Elias snaps, realizing what Peter means to do. “Don’t you dare.” He writhes, jerking his body as much as he can under the crush of Peter’s weight. It’s useless, of course, but he can hardly just lie there and let this happen. “Peter  _ Lukas,  _ don’t you dare -”

“I wouldn’t have to if you’d behave.” Peter’s tone is almost reproachful as he winds his belt around and between Elias’s arms. He’s a heavyset man with a big belly, so it’s a long belt. “Honestly, the way you’re carrying on, I might think you  _ want _ me to be rough with you. Is that it?” He tucks Elias’s bound arms almost tenderly into the crook of Elias’s own shoulder. 

They’re tied tightly enough together that it’s nearly impossible to move them from that position. Elias gives it a spirited try. It is, he has to admit, a masterful binding; even at times like these he can’t help but notice such things. No give at all, his skinny arms wrapped practically from wrist to elbow.

“I’m going to kill you,” Elias says. His voice trembles. His whole body is shaking, his heart thudding in his chest, his stomach twisting itself into knots. “I’ll do it myself. I’ll do it with my own bare hands, Peter, I promise you that.”

“Oh, I’m sure you’ll try.” Peter gives his cheek a pat, pulling his hand away just fast enough to avoid Elias’s snapping teeth. “We’ll just have to see, though, won’t we? Now, though, fun as this is, I’d like to get down to it, if you don’t mind.”

While Elias protests quite vocally that he  _ does  _ mind, Peter grips the bottom of his shirt in both hands and rips it neatly open up his chest. Tiny, polished buttons go flying. One hits Elias’s cheek and tumbles onto his bound hands. Others scatter soundlessly across the bed, like black snow, like ash-fall.

Peter flicks one of his stiff nipples, smiling in a way he no doubt thinks quite sly. “Enjoying yourself already, are you? I thought so.” He gropes artlessly at Elias’s chest, kneading the spare flesh of his breasts with bruising force.

Futile as it is, Elias still tries to squirm away from those brutish hands. “If I wanted to be pawed at like an animal, I’d go find some ugly drunk down at the pub, Peter, they’re hardly in short -” He cuts himself abruptly off with a sharp, involuntary gasp as Peter pinches, then cruelly twists his nipple. 

“You were saying?” Peter asks pleasantly. He squeezes hard, provoking another gasp from Elias, then yanks like he means to tear the nub of flesh right off. “Is that all it takes to shut you up? I was thinking I’d have to fill your mouth up to get a moment’s silence.” To drive his meaning home, he palms at himself through his trousers.

“Anything you put in my mouth,” Elias promises, “I’ll bite off. And I don’t give a damn what you want to do to me after.”

They regard each other without speaking, only the sound of their breath between them. Peter’s is still steady, if a bit quick. There’s a flush slowly working its way up his pallid, hairy chest, and the bulge in his trousers can no longer be ignored. 

Elias can’t seem to get enough air. His own breath is ragged and uneven, loud in his ears, heavy in his chest. Panic is starting to bleed through the fury. He’s neatly trapped, trussed up helpless as a hog to slaughter, and it’s obvious that Peter is enjoying this, inasmuch as Peter can ever enjoy anything.

“Very well,” Peter says eventually, with a shrug. “I’ll just get to the fun part, shall I?”

“Yes, why don’t you? You promised me half an hour, Peter, and the clock is ticking. I haven’t got all night.” Getting it over with quickly has always worked well for him when he’s needed it to. “Some of us,” he adds nastily, “have to  _ work _ for a living.”

“Oh, yes, and whose money is it that props up your little sham of an Institute?” Peter shifts backwards, then undoes the button and zipper of Elias’s trousers.

Perhaps he isn’t quite as helpless as all that. Elias tenses, ready to draw his legs back and kick. If he aims right he might get a heel into Peter’s solar plexus and stun him long enough to get out of the room, and if he can get out of the room, well, then any number of things can happen from there. 

As if he can hear the line of Elias’s thoughts, Peter pauses. Elias forces himself to go limp again, to play dead. After a moment, Peter must decide he’s going to behave. He shuffles backwards on his knees. As soon as there’s room, Elias digs his heels into the bed and pushes himself up towards the headboard, getting out from under Peter’s body, then kicks out with as much force as he can.

Not being able to sit up or see throws his aim off. His feet hit Peter in the belly, hard enough to make him grunt and swear but not nearly as hard enough to incapacitate him. Elias draws his legs back for another go, but a strong hand closes around his ankle and drags him back down the bed.

He fights like a mad thing. He thrashes and flails, kicking with his one free leg, spitting and snarling. Filth pours from his mouth, all the fury of centuries, all the things he’s never been able to say. Once he was helpless,  _ truly _ helpless, owned and alone, and now he is not, and even though he knows he’ll be overpowered, he isn’t going to let a chance to fight go now.

Peter does overpower him, of course. 

He ends up sprawled out and pinned down, a knee on his chest. He spits into Peter’s face again, wildly. This time Peter doesn’t slap him, but puts one huge hand over his mouth and nose and grips him round the throat with the other and bears mercilessly down. 

Fresh desperation bursts through Elias as blackness begins to eat away at the edges of his vision. He drums his heels against the bed. He arches his back. He swings his bound arms forward and tries to hit Peter, though he can’t get any leverage. He tries to bite, but Peter’s fingers are clamped too tightly around his jaw, and all he does is bite his own tongue again.

Red agony blooms in his chest. His heart pounds, thudding desperately against the cage of his ribs. But Peter holds on, and holds on, and holds on, until finally he swoons into unconsciousness.

A handful of seconds later, he wakes up. It’s been long enough for Peter to have stripped him from the waist down and straddled him again, once more pinning him in place.

“Back with us? Good. I don’t want you to miss any of this.” There’s a definite edge, now, to Peter’s voice. Elias takes a vicious joy in having been difficult enough to earn that. 

“How considerate of you,” Elias rasps out, his battered throat protesting. 

“Mm. I am going to gag you, though. You’ve said some shocking things to me, and I admit, I’m a bit hurt. Whatever happened to decorum?” Peter leans over, taking care to still keep the bulk of his weight on Elias, and picks up a crushed handful of dark fabric. 

Only when it’s right in his face does Elias recognize it as his boxer-briefs. “No,” he says from between stubbornly gritted teeth. “Absolutely not.” 

Peter doesn’t bother arguing. He just grabs Elias’s jaw in his other hand - provoking a thrill of fear that in Elias that he’ll be choked again - and digs his thumb and forefinger into the hinges of it until he forces Elias’s mouth open. Then he crams the silky wad of fabric between Elias’s teeth and into the back of his throat.

The musky taste of his own cunt, earthy with the day’s worth of sweat and skin oils, fills his mouth and climbs up into his nose, so he can practically smell it as well. Working his jaw to try and dislodge the impromptu gag only makes it shift towards his throat, threatening to cut off his airflow entirely. 

“There, now, that’s better. You do like to go on.” Peter pats his cheek, then drags the fingers of that hand slowly down the length of his body. Jaw, neck, chest, belly, raising a wake of pebbled skin with his nails, then down between Elias’s legs, to the cleft of his cunt. “You know, I don’t know why you’re putting up such a fuss, when it’s so obvious you like it. Look how wet you are.”

He is, indeed, humiliatingly wet already. Peter slides two fingers between his lips and holds them up so Elias can see just how slick they are. As if he couldn’t feel it already. As if his pulse isn’t throbbing between his legs.

Peter makes a show of sucking his fingers clean, bearded cheeks hollowing. He pulls them out with an obscenely showy, wet pop, then shoves them unceremoniously inside Elias. 

Elias jolts, reflexively clenching his thighs together. Wet already or not, spit or not, Peter’s fingers are big, and it hurts. 

Chuckling, Peter digs his fingers hard into the meat of Elias’s thigh and pries his legs apart with ease. His other hand works steadily in and out, loosening Elias up. In spite of his fury and humiliation, Elias’s cunt quickly relaxes around the intrusion, going slick and loose in preparation for more. To add insult to injury, every so often Peter pulls his fingers out and slides them up over Elias’s stiff clit, rubbing it between them before returning to fingering him.

_ Bastard,  _ Elias wants to call him, and  _ brute _ and  _ ill-bred, idiot son of a line of half-men _ , but all he can do is groan and grunt around the gag stuffed in his mouth. Some of the noises that escape him come traitorously close to being moans, especially when Peter pays his rough attention to his clit.

There’s no escape from it. All the discomforts of his body, every sore spot singing its own little note of pain, keep him grounded far too firmly in the moment. When he closes his eyes to try and seek some space inside his own mind, though, he finds himself remembering another bed and another man. He hadn’t been treated unkindly, nor ill-used, but that had only been the sense of a man who knew a well-tended cow birthed a fatter calf and gave more milk. He hadn’t loved that man.

Elias opens his eyes and looks up at his husband. The husband he  _ chose, _ this time, two centuries later. The man who he, if not trusts, at least has a cease-fire sort of understanding with. Weapons down, here, in the no-man’s land of this bed.

Peter isn’t looking at his face. Peter’s eyes are focused between his legs, on the way his fingers slip into and then out of Elias’s cunt. The flush on his chest has climbed up his neck and into his cheeks, now, and his mouth is open, tongue resting against his bottom lip. His fingers, even inside the heat of Elias’s body, stay the same no-temperature they always are, cool by contrast.

“Do you think you’re ready?” Peter asks, pulling his fingers free. “Well, doesn’t really matter what you think, I suppose. I’d like to get to it. I’ve been very patient with you, I think.” He fumbles his trousers open, pushing the waistband of his boxers down enough to free his cock. His eyes slide shut as he strokes it. “You really do get on my nerves, you know? I suppose you can take that as a compliment. I don’t generally care enough about most people one way or the other. But you have a singular talent for getting under someone’s skin.”

Peter’s been far from gentle this whole time, but his movements are even rougher and jerkier as he drags Elias’s legs farther open around his hips. His cock bobs as he shifts, stiff and livid, nearly purple at the head. His hand returns to it again and again while he’s moving into position.

Somehow, Elias can’t summon up much sympathy for Peter’s frustration.

The tip of Peter’s cock bumps against him, smearing stickiness up the inside of his thigh. Peter spreads his cunt open with one hand and grips himself at the base with the other, lining up, then pushes in with a long, low groan.

It isn’t fast or hard, but Peter doesn’t stop until he bottoms out. His cock is as big as the rest of him. Impaled on it to the hilt, Elias can barely breathe. He holds himself in shuddering stillness, trying to avoid any movement that might shift the thing inside of him and make him feel just how big it is.

Peter has no such compunctions. After a moment to catch his breath and adjust himself, he starts to move. Slow at first, his thrusts speed up like a train gathering steam, until he’s pumping hard enough into Elias to push him up the bed and into the headboard. Every thrust knocks it against the wall.

And it  _ hurts.  _ The pain reaches sharp fingers up through his belly, clawing into his guts. He breathes at the mercy of Peter’s rhythm, staccato bursts of desperate air sucked in through his nose, his head swimming and his vision full of white sparks. He squirms, not even sure himself if he’s trying to get away or rock his hips to meet Peter.

The wet clap of their bodies meeting echoes off the walls, the ceiling, a rising chorus of bodily pleasure. Hearing the sound drives Elias further into the heights of arousal. Too exhausted now to fight, too far gone to care, he lets himself give in. Every hurt place on his body - every aching bruise, every ebbing throb, every sharp burst of delicate flesh stretched too far too fast - reminds him that he wants this, that he asked for it, that with the first touch of his mind the man atop him will stop, pull out, untie him. 

For these few blissful minutes, he’s only a wet and open hole. He doesn’t have to do or think or feel or  _ be _ anything else. There are no plans, no spinning plates to balance, no schemes. There’s only this: him on his back, Peter between his legs, the dizzy slick heat of his arousal, the way he feels his own pulse in his clit and Peter’s pulse through his cock, both beating fast and hard but not quite in tandem. Two tides, pushed and pulled by different moons.

Grunting, Peter straightens up, sitting back on his haunches. He has to haul Elias’s hips up into his lap, curving Elias’s back into a bow. The change of angle makes it easier to just grind into Elias, so that’s what he does.

“See?” he pants, hoarse and low. “You love this. It’s what you’re made for. Now -” Peter curls one arm under Elias’s back, offering him some support, and with his other hand grips his clit between thumb and forefinger. As rough as he’s been this whole time, his grip is oddly delicate. “Now I want you to come for me. Come on me. I know you’re close. This is what you really want to be, isn’t it? Just a whore gagging for it.”

He jerks Elias’s clit with rapid flicks of his wrist. Every so often he gives it a squeeze which makes Elias shudder and clench tight around him. He keeps speaking, tone as pleasant and coaxing as the words are filthy, but Elias hears none of it. It’s all just noise crashing over him as he climbs higher and higher, closer to his peak, muscles winding tighter and tighter.

The unbearable tension breaks. He comes with a ragged, muffled howl, knees knocking against Peter’s ribs, writhing like someone’s passed a current through him. Peter keeps rubbing at him until the pleasure becomes overwhelming becomes painful, until he’s whimpering through his gag, then surges abruptly forward and begins fucking him properly again.

Every thrust forces his clenching cunt wide open and wrings a sob from his raw throat. Thankfully, it isn’t long before Peter reaches his own climax as well. With a growl, he buries himself as deep in Elias’s cunt as he can, cock spasming with each spurt. That’s oddly cool as well. Elias has always enjoyed being able to feel it so well in the past, but everything between his legs is so hideously oversensitive that he just wants it over with.

Finally, finally, Peter pulls out of him. That’s an unpleasant, slow scraping against his insides, and when he’s out there’s a skin-crawling gush of sticky fluids, but then it’s done with.

Elias sags against the mattress, trying to steady his breathing. It keeps hitching, catching in his chest and throat. As he comes back to himself more, he realizes he started crying at some point. For all the man’s many flaws, at least Peter can be safely counted on not to mention it.

He realizes that his hands are numb, as well, a burning sort of coldness that had gotten lost in the more overwhelming sensations of earlier. When Peter finally unwraps the belt from around his arms, sensation comes flooding back in rush of pins-and-needle prickling. Elias gingerly separates and stretches both arms. His elbows move like hinges full of gravel, but they move. More concerning is that his fingers have gone blotchily white, his nailbeds bluish, and they’re going to be the very devil to warm back up.

Duty done, Peter rolls off the bed and stands to do his trousers back up. As is usual after these little dalliances, he looks lost, gazing vacantly around the room as if he isn’t sure where he is or what he ought to be doing.

Luckily, Elias has never minded giving instructions. He plucks the impromptu gag from his mouth and casts it aside, then clears his throat and says, “A glass of water, if you please.” After a brief self-inventory, he adds, nose wrinkled, “And the wipes from the cabinet in there. Lord, you’ve made a mess of me.”

“Are you complaining?” Peter trots dutifully away to fetch the water and the wipes without waiting for an answer. 

At that moment, Elias doesn’t mind the lack of conversation. These encounters always leave him lighter than he was before, freed of some invisible mental burden, but they also put him in an introspective mood. His mind keeps trying to circle back to the things he thought of in the heat of the moment, those times before when he’d been similarly helpless. Those times, though, had been real. They hadn’t been a diverting evening planned ahead of time with a man who he - well, he’s not stupid enough to  _ trust _ anyone, but Peter comes as close as anyone does these days.

He doesn’t want to think of it. Peter, coming back, offers a pleasant diversion. The scratches down his chest are scabbed over now, nice and vividly red against the pallor of his skin, and there are dark flecks of dried blood crusted in the silvery hair covering him. Here and there on his body blooms a dark new bruise, courtesy of Elias’s struggling.

When Peter comes close enough, Elias sits up - bracing for the rush of dizziness as he does - and reaches out and trails one fingertip, feather-light, down the path of one of those scratches.

“Admiring your handiwork?” Peter asks sourly. He tosses the packet of wipes into Elias’s lap, but sets the glass down gently enough on the nightstand. “You didn’t need to kick me so hard.”

Elias glances up at him, smiling, and pushes his thumb hard into the bruise just above Peter’s hipbone. “Why, Peter,” he says, all sweetness, “you broke into my home and hauled me off to ravish me in my own bed. I was afraid for my life. What was I supposed to do?” His own throat and face are going to be a spectacular sight come morning, and  _ Peter _ isn’t the one who has to walk into a building full of his own employees looking like he lost a barfight.

“I’m just saying,” Peter says, sitting heavily on the edge of the bed, “that when you ask someone to do something for you, as a favor, they don’t usually expect to get attacked over it. That’s the sort of thing that makes a man have second thoughts.”

Elias rolls his eyes and sips at his water. It’s blessedly cool, soothing the swollen burn of his throat, though it isn’t doing his hands any favors. “It’s not as if it’s only for  _ my _ benefit. Don’t pretend like you don’t enjoy playing the brute.”

He leans back against the headboard, eyes half-lidded. The thought drifts across his mind that he left the paperwork downstairs undone, but it’s about all he can do to stay halfway upright. It will just have to wait for the morning.

Cleaning himself up is not going to wait. Sighing, he sets the water back on the nightstand and reaches for the wipes. Before he can fumble it open with his frustratingly unresponsive fingers, though, it’s plucked out of his hands.

“Let me get that,” Peter says gruffly, that way he has when he feels awkward about doing something that could be construed as caring for another person. It’s subtly different from every  _ other _ way he sounds awkward, undersocialized creature that he is, but Elias knows him well enough to recognize this particular flavor. “Since I’m the one who made such a mess and all.”

“Oh,” Elias murmurs, unable to resist salting the wound, “how thoughtful. Thank you.”

It really is quite nice. Peter wipes the drool and dried tears off his face without comment. The wipes are cool against his hot skin, Peter’s manner brisk but not unkind, and Elias can’t say as he’s ever turned down a chance to be  _ seen to.  _ Perhaps it would be even more pleasant were they reclining in a large tub of warm water, him leaning back against Peter’s broad chest to be lazily caressed, but he’ll take what he can get.

“Stay the night,” he asks once Peter’s done cleaning him up. 

Peter goes still. “That wasn’t part of the deal,” he says, tone light and meaningless as television static. 

“I didn’t realize I had to arrange spending a night with my own husband in advance.” Snapping is the wrong tack to take, Elias knows as soon as the words are out of his mouth. It makes him ache, though, how often he’s alone in this wide bed, how impossible it is to hold Peter down for any length of time.

“Well, I’m sorry, Elias.” Peter does not sound or look sorry in the least as he stands up and begins fishing around for his shed clothing. “It’s been a lovely evening, but you know how it is. Things to do, people to -”

“Yes, yes.” Elias slides further down in the bed and waves a tired hand. It was foolish to even ask. Another time he might have made a proper fight of it - the urge is in him even now, to say crueler things more harshly barbed, to flay Peter with his tongue, maybe to pick the glass up off the nightstand and toss it at his head and see what he does  _ then _ \- but he just doesn’t have it in him right now.

Elias pulls the blankets up around his shoulders, and doesn’t watch to see Peter step back into the fog he’d come out of.


End file.
